You are here: Home / Education / The Japanese-German Graduate Externship

The Japanese-German Graduate Externship

Japanese-German Graduate Externship – Partnership between the University of Münster and Nagoya University in Educational Research of Chemistry –

The Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, and the Research Center of Materials Science, Nagoya University have launched a new Japanese-German Graduate Externship with the Graduate School of Chemistry, University of Münster, Germany. This partnership aims to cooperate in the educational research of graduate school doctoral courses. The objectives of the program are to establish a new comprehensive collaborative education system, which cannot be realized by existing short-term exchange programs, and to internationalize the educational research of both graduate schools. Nagoya University has received support from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) for a new pilot program, “Japanese-German Graduate Externship”, and the University of Münster has received support from Deutche Forschungsgemeinshaft (DFG) for an “International Research Training Group” program.

Our partner, the University of Münster, is the third largest university in Germany. Currently about 39,000 students are enrolled at the University of Münster and more than 5,000 students graduate annually. The university boasts a wide range of disciplines, over 120, in fact, and many of the departments are achieving excellent results. The university features an international aspect as more than 3,500 students from abroad are enrolled and has exchange agreements with more than 400 research institutions all over the world.

The main feature of this new program is to dispatch doctoral course students from the graduate schools of the respective universities to their counterparts for several months to collaborate in writing doctoral dissertations. The exchange graduate students are to include the results of their research activities conducted at the partner university in their doctoral dissertation, which is to be submitted to the university that they belong to at home. The exchange graduate students are expected to make presentations at academic conferences, write manuscripts for academic journals, and actively participate in joint planning of seminars in the host country. Nagoya University expects that number of young faculty members, who participate in joint educational research activities, will grow.

A key issue in the science technology policy in both Japan and Germany is human resources. In particular, the mission imposed on postgraduate education is enormous. Universities are expected to provide basic knowledge of advanced and profound science and technology, and to foster talented young researchers, who can actively engage in research activities on the international scene. Thus, it is extremely important for the future of both countries that graduate students receive education in an international environment from an earlier stage in order to cultivate the foundation for active involvement in research activities abroad.
We are proud that Nagoya University, which is recognized as a Center of Excellence (COE) for research on the design and creation of new functional materials, is entrusted with the mission to lead this program with the University of Münster.